Creātūris - Interactive Hologram Experience

An Interactive Hologram Exploration

Creātūris

An Interactive, Holographic Experience

(Work In Progress)

‘Creātūris’ (as in Latin for Creatures) is an ongoing Thesis collaboration of interactive holographic projections between Carlos Enciso and Dakota Hopkins. This experience lives in the form of a gallery installation that invites viewers to interact and control the experience. The standing structure allows for a 360º view.

Utilizing the Pepper's Ghost optical effect on a translucent pyramid, we created the illusion of a hologram. Within that medium we also explored organic modeling and animation. The juxtaposition of organic creatures within a geometric structure worked well and gave our piece a digital zoo type of vibe. With looping animation and sound, this is an interactive holographic experience in multiple dimensions that you can walk around and see the creatures come to life.

The animation and sound are controlled via the user's inputs on a midi control pad. A projector is hung at the top of the structure, projecting on a semi-transparent screen. The projection is then reflected on each side of the glass pyramid, creating each angle that the creatures are seen and experienced from. Walking around the structure provides a surrounding view of each creature animation.

Check below to see Gallery photos/videos, and a complete breakdown/making-of for our process:

Making-of video

Creaturis at the Best of Ringling Gallery

Hologram pyramid demo

Gallery Photos:

Creature Closeups:

Some of the creatures! Most of Carlos's were focused on trying to provided a different experience based on which side of the pyramid you were on.

More creatures! Most of Dakota's focused on interesting detailed bits of animation and modeling to create very subtle and detailed moving sculptures.

Process Pictures:

For the faces piece with projected type, we shot green screen turnarounds of our heads to then assemble in a batch, key out in Nuke, load up into PhotoScan, and create a proper decimated model and textures based upon our facial structure.

We used VDMX5 for our projection and sound output straight to the projector. Each clip is loaded up onto its own spot on the APC40 keys with clip eject enabled. Each piece will continually loop until the user lets off the keys.

C4D proof of concept with the pepper's ghost effect working within C4D. This wasn't a new technology and has been used in a variety of ways, but it was interesting to see that even within a program the illusion worked.

Structure Creation:

Physical build of the structure, we had to initially rebuild it about three times since the throw of the projector was way longer than we anticipated. To fix this issue, we purchased a short-throw projector and reconfigured the pvc-based structure to house the projector and screen. The projector is suspended in a pvc cage which allowed us to perfectly position and angle the projector's image in a light-weight fashion. Everything is run off of a MacBook Pro with VDMX5 that interfaces with our midi control pad (now an MPD18). Sound output from a Bose sounddock.

Most recent build of the top structure. The short-throw projector allowed us to lower the height of the overall structure. The pvc is glued together and surprisingly strong. The projector cage provided us 3D gyro-like movement so we could perfectly align the image without distortion.